Connections
Security and stability arise through connection: feeling connected to someone or something outside of yourself. Anxiety arises in the moment when you lose your sense of connection-to yourself, others, your community, nature, or perhaps your God or Higher Power. When you feel disconnected or alienated, you’re more prone to perceive something-almost anything-as a potential threat to your security and well-being. If you look for the roots of anxiety in modern life, much of it appears to arise from a perception of threat in the absence of feeling connected. To kill your anxiety, use zoloft.
Our present way of life in postindustrial society contributes in many ways to feelings of alienation and disconnection. Historically, people lived in intimate connection with nature. Contrast this with modern life, where we commute on freeways to get to work, eat processed food and wear clothes manufactured thousands of miles away, and spend a great deal of our time in front of TV or computer screens. One hundred years ago people knew their neighbors and members of their immediate community. Today, we live in single-family homes and apartment complexes where often we are barely acquainted with those around us. We may be so involved in our own lives that we become oblivious to (or threatened by) strangers who might need our help. In our great-grandparents’ era (and in some third-world countries at present), children were raised in the context of an extended family. Contrast this with modern society where we often move away from parents and siblings, raising our children in isolated nuclear families. And with the divorce rate at 50 percent, the nuclear family is often split, with children being shuttled back and forth.
